the constant inroads of the
Tartars he established the Cossacks, a rough cavalry formed of the
hunters, {140} fishers, and graziers of the Ukraine, quite analogous to
the cowboys of the American Wild West. From being a military body they
developed into a state and nation that occupied a special position in
Poland and then in Russia. Sigismund's fiscal policy, by recovering
control of the mint and putting the treasury into the hands of capable
bankers, effectively provided for the economic life of the government.

[Sidenote: Reformation]

Poland has generally been as open to the inroads of foreign ideas as to
the attacks of enemies; a peculiar susceptibility to alien culture, due
partly to the linguistic attainments of many educated Poles and partly
to an independent, almost anarchical disposition, has made this nation
receive from other lands more freely than it gives. Every wave of new
ideas innundates the low-lying plain of the Vistula. So the
Reformation spread with amazing rapidity, first among the cities and
then among the peasants of that land. In the fifteenth century the
influence of Huss and the humanists had in different ways formed
channels facilitating the inrush of Lutheranism. The unpopularity of a
wealthy and indolent church predisposed the body politic to the new
infection. Danzig, that "Venice of the North," had a Lutheran preacher
in 1518; while the Edict of Thorn, intended to suppress the heretics,
indicates that as early as 1520 they had attracted the attention of the
central government. But this persecuting measure, followed thick and
fast by others, only proved how little the tide could be stemmed by
paper barriers. The cities of Cracow, Posen, and Lublin, especially
susceptible on account of their German population, were thoroughly
infected before 1522. Next, the contagion attacked the country
districts and towns of Prussia, which had been pretty thoroughly
converted prior to its secularization.

The first political effect of the Reformation was to {141} stimulate
the unrest of the lower classes. Riots and rebellions, analogous to
those of the Peasants' War in Germany, followed hard upon the preaching
of the "gospel." Sigismund could restore order here and there, as he
did at Danzig in 1526 by a military occupation, by fining the town and
beheading her six leading innovators, but he could not suppress the
growing movement. For after the accession of the lower classes came
that of